I was one of the millions who spent their waking hours in the mid-1990s listening to the trials and tribulations of football player/actor O.J. Simpson. I was reminded of it with the recent passing of his lead attorney, Johnnie Cochran.
Upon first reports of the double-homicide my impression was a kind of 'Oh well, a jealous celebrity kills his ex-wife and boyfriend.' Soon after the initial reports, I began to believe that the proof of Simpson's guilt that was supposed to be so airtight was tenuous at best and I became convinced of his innocence.
I think I was attracted to the position of Simpson's innocence because of the almost unanimous belief that he had to be guilty. I was disturbed by the daily denouncements of Simpson and his legal representation in the new world of cable news/talk shows. I sensed that some people in the media were using the Simpson trial as racist propaganda. It became clear that evidence had been tampered with. Witnesses changed their timelines of events in order to fit into the prosecution's case.
My twenty years as a shop steward in my union had given me an idea of how prosecutorial powers can be perverted to achieve an end not necessarily in harmony with justice.
I wrote a 35,000-word essay about the trial that was going to run in the second issue of an investigative journal that went out of business after its first issue. Some of my earlier presumptions in that essay have been proven false, but I think that much I wrote about ten years ago has turned out to be true.
TO BE CONTINUED


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